Working with heart pine

[joec]

I was given about 10- 8/4 x 10" x 10' heart pine beams. They are incredible looking and very dense. I have worked with heart pine before, but nothing this heavy and full of turpentine. I have a den in my home that was salvaged from an old Pender County church, built in the 1800's and it is all heart pine. I want to build a sofa table for this room out of some of this lumber. I have to make 4 panels and will use dominos to reinforse the glue joints, but was wondering about the glue bonding to this wood. I will also use domino's for the panel to leg assembly. I would appreciate any experienced voices out there.

 

[Skymaster]

ALCOHOL wipe glue joints with liberal amounts

 

[joec]

Just trying to run the 1st top board (11" wide) through my planer. Not going well. As I have to glue it up to a total width of 16", I think I will rip it down to more manageable pieces and joint, plane and glue it back up again.

 

[Wiley's Woodworks]

I'm more concerned about your using dominoes to attach the leg assembly to the table top (you're calling it a panel?). A 16" wide table top will have a lot of movement over 4 seasons, and dominoes are absolutely rigid; there's no room for expansion and contraction of the top.

 

[joec]

I am using a plan from the Wood Whisperer site. It has 3 shelves (panels) that have breadboard ends. The breadboard ends is where I will use two dominos per breadboard side, four per breadboard end. The design has the panel and breadboard end wrapping two sides of each leg. The top will not be attached to the legs at all, but will sit on top of the top panel which joins the top of each leg.

 

[kelLOGg]

I glued it up with TitebondIII just as I would do any other wood and have not had a problem. I made this TV table at the onset of Covid and I really like it. It is 15" deep.

 

[Rwe2156]

I don't think you're going to have much movement issues if its the typical tight grained old growth pine.

I've seen quite a bit of furniture made with old growth pine (we call it fat lighter or lighter wood around here). I think hide glue might be worth looking into.

If it's not reclaimed lumber you've got a gold mine there!!

Dominoes are fine if they are the larger ones. Another good option is floating tenons.